Ryan O'Neal Blames Farrah's Cancer on Daughter

Receive the latest celebrity updates in your inbox

Ryan O'Neal and daughter Tatum begin a bizarre new chapter in their already troubled relationship

Is Tatum O'Neal a carcinogen?

In a bizarre interview on "Piers Morgan Tonight," veteran actor Ryan O'Neal explained how he felt his strained relationship with his daughter may have given wife Farrah Fawcett the cancer that claimed her life.

"What bothers me the most is that there was turmoil during my love affair with Farrah. A lot of it caused by my family, by my kids. All of them, but particularly Tatum,” O’Neal said. “I just think that if she had never met us, would she still be alive today? Because nobody knows what causes cancer.”

He claims he can't see any other reason why a woman who exercised frequently, didn't smoke, and didn't drink could come down with the disease. “And then we came along. The four of us. And gradually she got weaker. I don't know.”

O'Neal's comments come after Tatum gave an interview with PopEater where she claimed her father "found an escape" in in his relationship with Fawcett.

"I was turning into a woman before he met Farrah and things were going to s***," she said. "They were really turning badly so he found an escape with Farrah and he took it and that's fine and we [her and brother Griffin] made it the best way we could. But it was absolutely his inability to deal with me as a young woman and to hear me and to accept me and it was a very difficult time for me."

This is far from the most bizarre chapter in the long and tortured history between the O'Neals - at Fawcett's funeral in 2009, Tatum recalls her father not only failing to recognize her, but hitting on her as well - a fact Ryan admitted to in a Vanity Fair interview.

"I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me," said Ryan. "I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She said, 'Daddy, it's me--Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."